I haven’t touched this site in about 18 months. So what would bring me out of food blogging retirement? There really should be air quotes around “food blogging.” What would be so fantastic, so mind blowing that I’d try three different passwords before I remembered how to log in?
The food at Feast was pretty great as usual. Jose Chesa made a fabulous duck escabeche with avocado, served in a waffle cone. Maya Lovelace’s fried chicken was incredible as always. But the real revelation . . . was a product that I never knew I needed, but have been missing since my first pint of Cherry Garcia in 1991.
Back then, I was sitting in the first floor of the commons room watching a movie, probably David Lynch, and sadly observing my half-eaten pint slowly melt. It wasn’t that I couldn’t finish it, it was just I wanted it to last at least part way through the movie.
Skip ahead another four years and a few hundred pints and I’m sitting on the couch watching TV with my now wife, passing a pint of Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche back and forth while watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s a cold Portland evening. We have a blanket over us, are all cuddled up and maybe a fire in the fireplace, but our hands are freezing from the cold carton of ice cream.
A few, make that many years later, we’re at Feast, Portland’s premier food event. Some of the best chefs in the U.S. are here.
And so is Tillamook Ice Cream.
And they are giving away ice cream cozies.
Perfectly sized foam and fabric insulators shaped to nestle a pint of ice cream in their temperature neural embrace. They keep your ice cream cold and your hands warm. I may never eat ice cream the same way again.